The Nineties

[GaT]

I enjoyed the episode, I wish there were more coming up.

Seeing all the MTV stuff from when they played videos & had show like "The Week in Rock" just makes me sad. I really miss having a music TV station. :-(

[Eureka]

WAY too much time on grunge/Kurt Cobain and not enough on the women and Lilith Fair. Surprised they didn't go more into the boy bands because they were all very big too. Oh well, it was still enjoyable.

[Sarah 103]

I'll never understand why they do an episode on TV and not movies (this is true for all of the decades series). 

[GHScorpiosRule]

6 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

I'll never understand why they do an episode on TV and not movies (this is true for all of the decades series). 

I'm pretty sure they covered movies for The Seventies. And I just thought of something else that exploded during this decade-trash talk TV shows-starting with Ricki Lake (though it didn't start out as such), Jennie Jones, Jerry Springer, and that one dude whose name I can't recall-Charles something??

[Blakeston]

On 7/10/2017 at 6:40 AM, Spartan Girl said:

LOVED the History of Comedy promo! Glad they're acknowledging how they got interrupted. Hee.

This first episode was ok. Made me nostalgic for all the shows I grew up with.

Loved how the one episode they mentioned of Fresh Prince was the one where Carlton and Will got racially profiled by cops. Carlton broke my heart in that last scene where he asked Phil if was normal for a cop topple over a driver that was just going under the speed limit.

And Phil's response: "I asked myself the same question the first time I got pulled over."

I remember that episode. It was the first time I'd heard of "driving while black."

There was one bit of dialogue that really bothered me, though. One of the characters (Will, maybe?) says that Rosa Parks didn't refuse to give up her seat to a white man because of politics, she did it because her feet were tired. And it's treated as this profound moment of truth.

And as anyone well acquainted with the bus boycotts could have told the writers, Rosa Parks worked for the NAACP. She wasn't some random woman who was just too tired to switch seats. She was deliberately taking a political stand. To suggest otherwise is to deny her agency.

[woodstock]

On 8/21/2017 at 1:41 AM, GaT said:

Seeing all the MTV stuff from when they played videos & had show like "The Week in Rock" just makes me sad. I really miss having a music TV station. :-(

I was grinning like crazy at the clips of Ed Lover, Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren. I miss MTV News, The Week in Rock and the weekly video countdown. I wonder whatever happened to Adam Curry? MTV Classic plays videos and is my background entertainment while cooking/cleaning/paying bills. They have theme hours-90s Nation, Rock Block, I Want My 80s and if someone's birthday or special event they'll play videos from that artist or group. Good times!

No mention of Aaliyah, Brandy or Boyz II Men. I too am surprised that they spent so little time on the boy bands. It felt like that segment was tacked on at the end.

We will never know what could have been with Tupac and Biggie.

[GaT]

1 hour ago, woodstock said:

MTV Classic plays videos and is my background entertainment while cooking/cleaning/paying bills.

I watch that sometimes, but I miss a station with current videos. I used to watch MTV Hits all the time & leave it on for hours, but once the channel became NickMusic, it sucks.

[woodstock]

I hear you on having a channel that plays current videos. Sometimes I wonder if artists and groups even make music videos anymore. LOL

[GaT]

7 hours ago, woodstock said:

I hear you on having a channel that plays current videos. Sometimes I wonder if artists and groups even make music videos anymore. LOL

That's what confuses me, because I know they do. I've been told that people watch them on YouTube, but that's not like watching a channel. The only other video channel I know is Fuse, & when they play videos it's good, but all they seem to play now are reruns of Moesha & Everybody Hates Chris.

Edited August 23, 2017 by GaT

[blueray]

I just saw the music one, I liked it. I do agree that they should have spend more time with boy (and girl) bands than they did. It was kind of shoved in at the end. I get that they had to talk about hip hop and Nirvana. And while I like grunge I was grown up by the time I really heard it. Boy and girl bands where what I grew up listening too. At the end when they listened a few bands that came out of the nineties, I heard of every one :).

[WescottF1]

On 8/23/2017 at 7:21 AM, woodstock said:

I hear you on having a channel that plays current videos. Sometimes I wonder if artists and groups even make music videos anymore. LOL

MTV did air something called the Video Music Awards last night but all I've seen about it are reports of the horrible clothing the attendees wore.

[ljenkins782]

On 8/22/2017 at 6:46 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

I'm pretty sure they covered movies for The Seventies. And I just thought of something else that exploded during this decade-trash talk TV shows-starting with Ricki Lake (though it didn't start out as such), Jennie Jones, Jerry Springer, and that one dude whose name I can't recall-Charles something??

I don't think they did. I've watched these series WAY too many times, especially the Seventies, which might be my favorite of the series. 

But yeah, movies seem like a good topic for a series like this. They would have to cover the Titanic mania for the Nineties series for sure. 

Quote

Man, this was like a fist in the gut and took me back. I was in college when the Rodney King beating, that farce of a trial and verdict, Reginald Denny's beating and riots happened, and still it felt like things still happening today. And OMG, the case of the Hasidic Jew hitting those two young black kids and killing one? NOW I know that this is the case that was ripped from the headlines used in Season Four's Law & Order episode. And a much...bigger with the flowing mane Rev. Al Sharpton! Man looks positively sickly today in comparison.

I've watched several documentaries about the LA riots recently in addition to this episode and it never stops being a punch in the gut to watch. I will never forget seeing the Reginald Denny beating live in real time. I was clear across the country from LA but I was absolutely terrified by that footage. 

Quote

Edit after I watched the rerun:  my prior understanding of the situation from sources other than this show is that the only reason that "nothing happened" was because programmers in private industry and government were very diligent in the years leading up to the millennium about updating the programming of the older systems still in use (the ones created prior to the acknowledgment of a 4-digit year system).  The one talking head mentioned this (as did the historical report from Tom Brokaw about the cost of it), but some of the others did say that Y2K was much ado about nothing.  We do kind of owe the programmers who addressed our power plants, hospitals, defense systems, etc., a debt of gratitude for patching the system so well (and I guess that this was mostly an issue for the oldest networks, which they didn't mention on the show).

The Y2K mania was so funny to watch back since nothing really happened. It was a weird night though, we were waiting for our ride outside a bar in Philly and there was NO ONE in the street. One of the busiest streets of Philadelphia and not a soul OR a car. My friends were actually lying in the middle of the street, ala that scene in The Notebook, just because they could. Eerie. 

For some reason, CNN On Demand is missing episodes 1, 2 and 7 (though perhaps 7 hadn't aired yet at the time that I watched). I'm very curious to see the music one, even though it sounds like it wasn't that great based on the comments.

[STFUFrank]

On 8/23/2017 at 8:21 AM, woodstock said:

I hear you on having a channel that plays current videos. Sometimes I wonder if artists and groups even make music videos anymore. LOL

They do but they're shared on YouTube now. 

[GaT]

On 8/23/2017 at 5:21 AM, woodstock said:

I hear you on having a channel that plays current videos. Sometimes I wonder if artists and groups even make music videos anymore. LOL

 

4 hours ago, TotalHellion said:

They do but they're shared on YouTube now. 

I have figured out a workaround about the lack of current music videos but so I don't end up hijacking this thread, I posted it in the Music Video thread 

Edited October 1, 2017 by GaT

[willco]

CNN has been running episodes of The 90's most of the evening. Even though I've seen them, some multiple times, I'm always sucked in a little because I remember so much of this stuff. I'm particularly enticed by the technology episode, the one with the introduction to the public internet, AKA dial-up. Hard to believe that it was about 20 years ago, I got my first entry machine, a brand new "Web Tv" , if anyone else even remembers those ! It wasn't a computer, but it did get me online- in a limited fashion- and that's all that really mattered. It cost about half what an actual computer would have, and it was what I could afford at the time.

 

When I talk to my nephews about this kind of stuff, it must be like when my parents told me about things like WW 2. If you weren't there, you just don't get it. ( Not to compare being able to surf the web with actually being in a war ! Just the idea of having to be there to get it.)

[PRgal]

On 12/31/2017 at 0:30 AM, willco said:

CNN has been running episodes of The 90's most of the evening. Even though I've seen them, some multiple times, I'm always sucked in a little because I remember so much of this stuff. I'm particularly enticed by the technology episode, the one with the introduction to the public internet, AKA dial-up. Hard to believe that it was about 20 years ago, I got my first entry machine, a brand new "Web Tv" , if anyone else even remembers those ! It wasn't a computer, but it did get me online- in a limited fashion- and that's all that really mattered. It cost about half what an actual computer would have, and it was what I could afford at the time.

 

When I talk to my nephews about this kind of stuff, it must be like when my parents told me about things like WW 2. If you weren't there, you just don't get it. ( Not to compare being able to surf the web with actually being in a war ! Just the idea of having to be there to get it.)

Holy cr@p!  I haven't used "surf the web" since, well...the 90s (okay, maybe more like 2002, but still).  I wonder how You've Got Mail! would work in a 2018 context.  Wait, it wouldn't.  Because she'll just Google his handle and find out who he is.  Somehow. 

[GaT]

5 hours ago, PRgal said:

I wonder how You've Got Mail! would work in a 2018 context.  Wait, it wouldn't.  Because she'll just Google his handle and find out who he is.  Somehow. 

No, she would contact Catfish so that she could be on TV & get her 15 minutes.

[PRgal]

32 minutes ago, GaT said:

No, she would contact Catfish so that she could be on TV & get her 15 minutes.

And she'll find a way during those 15 minutes to save her store.